Ivana found the number in an old message she had never deleted. Six years earlier Dunja had written that she knew about Ivana's affair with her husband. Ivana did not reply then. She believed Adnan when he said his marriage had long been over and Dunja would understand once she stopped being angry. Now she sat in the kitchen of the apartment they had bought together, trying to compose a message to that same woman.
In recent months Adnan carried his phone even when taking out the rubbish. One night she heard him in the hallway using the tender voice she had considered theirs. She did not need to see a message. When she asked him, he said she was too insecure and was suffocating him. He had once used those same words to describe Dunja. Ivana recognized them six years late.
Dunja agreed to coffee, but chose somewhere far from both work and home. She arrived carrying a bag of groceries and left it on an empty chair. Ivana began with an apology she had prepared for too long. Dunja listened, then asked why she was contacting her now. The question was not hostile. It was precise, which made things even harder for Ivana.
She described the phone, the voice, and Adnan's answers. She asked how Dunja had first realized. Dunja looked toward her bag, from which a leek protruded. She said she remembered, but did not want to relive every step so Ivana could determine whether the same pattern applied. Her former marriage was not an instruction manual for the current one.
Ivana felt an urge to defend herself. She wanted to explain that she had been deceived too, that she had not known how much Dunja suffered. Then she realized the woman opposite had not summoned her for judgment. She herself had come requesting something, perhaps forgiveness that would make her own position easier. She lowered her hands into her lap and said only that she was sorry for not answering that message.
Dunja nodded. She did not embrace her or say they were now the same. She finished her coffee and left to collect her child from school. Ivana remained a few more minutes, looking at the empty space where the bag had stood. She had received neither evidence nor a verdict. At home she told Adnan she wanted to discuss their marriage, without invoking Dunja and without accepting an insult as an answer. This time there was no other woman behind whom she could hide her own decision.